Gaza winter temperature and weather: what families face

How cold does Gaza get in winter?

Gaza sits on the Mediterranean coast, so its winters are cool rather than freezing. Long-term averages from a published climate dataset for the Gaza weather station give these mean daily temperatures:

• November: highs of 25.0°C, lows of 14.5°C.
• December: highs of 20.6°C, lows of 11.6°C.
• January: highs of 18.3°C, lows of 9.4°C.
• February: highs of 18.9°C, lows of 10.0°C.

Gaza's rainy season

Almost all of Gaza's rain falls in the cooler months. Summers are practically dry. The same long-term averages show about 390 mm of rain a year, falling like this:

• October: 18 mm.
• November: 64 mm.
• December: 81 mm.
• January: 104 mm.
• February: 76 mm.
• March: 30 mm.

Gaza weather in December

December averages about 20.6°C by day and 11.6°C at night, with around 81 mm of rain. In December 2025, severe winter storms affected some 65,000 households, according to OCHA. Tents were blown away or damaged, homes collapsed, belongings were soaked, and in several places entire displacement sites flooded because of poor drainage and low-lying ground.

Why mild weather is deadly in a tent

Numbers like 10°C don't sound extreme, but they describe outdoor air. A family in a thin tent on wet sand, with no heating and bedding that is already damp, has little protection from it. Humanitarian reports from last winter show what that meant:

• At least 11 children reportedly died from hypothermia in winter 2025–26, including a two-month-old baby and a one-year-old child, UNICEF reported in February 2026.
• Nearly 795,000 people, almost 40% of the population, were sheltering at 761 displacement sites in flood-prone areas in January 2026, according to OCHA. Coastal sites on low, sandy land flood from both rain and the sea.
• Rainwater mixed with sewage in flooded areas, exposing children to water-borne disease.
• 25 people died between mid-December 2025 and mid-January 2026 when damaged buildings collapsed in bad weather, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza as reported by OCHA.
• Drainage pumps and pipes, heaters and solar equipment were restricted from entering as "dual-use" items, so aid groups could only make short-term fixes.

What changes this winter

Conditions going into winter 2026–27 are not better. In September 2026, UN News reported that 84% of families lived in extremely difficult conditions, including shelters or tents that don't protect from the weather. More than 950,000 people were estimated to live in 989 displacement sites at medium or high risk of flooding, including over 400,000 in 451 high-risk sites (OCHA, 23 September 2026); after physically assessing over 400 sites, the Site Management Cluster found 217 at medium to high risk, hosting about 235,000 people (OCHA, 2 October 2026). OCHA said that with the rainy season approaching, aid groups were helping families move from damaged buildings and flood-prone areas, but restrictions on tents, tarpaulins and other critical items were hampering the response.

That is why winter support needs to arrive before the rain: sealed shelters and tarpaulins, blankets and warm clothes, and drainage for flood-prone sites. See Gaza winter relief for what that involves and how many people are displaced in Gaza for the scale of need.